Quick Start
Install SDL-MCP, index your repo, and connect your first coding agent in under 5 minutes.
Client Setup
Connect Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, or any MCP client.
Core Concepts
Understand the Iris Gate Ladder, Symbol Cards, Graph Slicing, and Delta analysis.
MCP Tools Reference
Full reference for all 35 MCP tools with parameters and response shapes.
Why SDL-MCP?
Every time an AI coding agent reads a file to answer a question, it consumes thousands of tokens — most of which are irrelevant. A debugging session touching 20 files can burn 40,000+ tokens on context gathering alone. SDL-MCP fixes this with a four-rung Iris Gate Ladder that lets agents dial their context aperture from a pinhole to wide-open:| Rung | What the Agent Sees | Token Cost | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — Symbol Card | Name, signature, summary, dependencies, metrics | ~100 | ”What does this function do?“ |
| 2 — Skeleton IR | Signatures + control flow, bodies elided | ~300 | ”What’s the shape of this class?“ |
| 3 — Hot-Path Excerpt | Lines matching specific identifiers + context | ~600 | ”Where is this.cache initialized?“ |
| 4 — Raw Code Window | Full source (policy-gated, justification required) | ~2,000 | ”I need to rewrite this error handler” |
Key capabilities
Symbol Cards
~100-token metadata records for every function, class, interface, and type — with confidence-scored dependency edges.
Graph Slicing
BFS over the dependency graph with weighted edges and token budgets. Returns the most relevant symbols for any task.
Delta & Blast Radius
Semantic diffs showing what a change means and which dependents are at risk — not just what lines changed.
Live Indexing
Editor buffer changes are reflected in search and cards in real time — no manual re-index needed.
Development Memories
Cross-session knowledge persisted to both a graph database and checked-in markdown files.
Sandboxed Runtime
Run tests, linters, and scripts through SDL-MCP’s governance layer with executable allowlisting and CWD jailing.
Get started in 3 steps
Initialize and index your repo
Using npx? Replace
sdl-mcp with npx --yes sdl-mcp@latest in all commands.